[COPENHAGEN AND MALMO] Science communicators from around the world have
devised recommendations to put forward to the UN for better
communicating climate change impacts and mitigation methods.

The recommendations arose from the Copenhagen Challenge
project, which took place in Copenhagen last week (26 June) at the
Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) conference, and
will be submitted for consideration by the UN Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC).

ADVERTISEMENT

While climate change is an established fact in the scientific
community, it is still a challenge to persuade people to take action,
said Mikkel Bohm, director of the non-profit organisation Danish
Science Communication, at the conference.

He said the gathering of more than 500 science communicators
at the PCST meeting offered a marvellous chance to "build bridges and
dialogues in societies on the issues of climate change".

The Copenhagen Challenge consisted of 14 discussion topics,
such as how to communicate climate change to communities without access
to modern mass media, dealing with regional differences in climate
change and communicating to make people change their behaviour.

The topics were distributed to all PCST delegates, who were
organised into focus groups to offer up to three recommendations to
tackle any of the challenges.

Recommendations included the use of natural meeting places
such as schools, shops and hospitals for climate discussions, adopting
folk arts, games, toys, and dances as communication tools, and focusing
the design of climate strategies on identified local problems and
needs. Another suggestion was to "localise both the impacts of climate
change and the impacts of people's activity on the climate" to change
people's behaviours.

"We have had an overweight of recommendations. All of them
will eventually be chosen by people of relevance at UNFCCC or
elsewhere," Bohn told SciDev.Net.

Manoj Patairiya, president of Indian Science Writers'
Association, said the challenge offered a constructive, open platform
to discuss the issues surrounding climate change communication.

But, Manoj told SciDev.Net, there should be more topics
related to the communication situation in the developing countries,
such as the contradictions between supporting development and
mitigating climate change.